[quote][b]2) Closing Time: a Case Study[/b][/quote]Our first glimpse of an exotic's inner workings came during the [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIp7vZuYzoA]E3 2013 Demo[/url] when Joe Staten examined the progression tree of the exotic heavy machine gun known as [url=http://www.bungie.net/7_Destiny-Drawing-Board-Thunderlord/en/News/News?aid=11089#!]Thunderlord[/url]. While many players were very excited to see the promises that this legendary weapon had to offer, I remember myself being fairly unimpressed with its design. Don't get me wrong, Thunderlord is certainly a strong weapon of mass destruction between its overpenetrating explosive rounds and its bonus damage which builds on successive kills, it's just that I think that it would be a shame if all of Destiny's exotics were merely more damaging and deadly versions of their sub-exotic counterparts. Afterall, it's hard for your mythical weapons to stand out from the crowd if their only claim to fame is "I do a slightly better job at killing people than ordinary guns!" Was this the only viable direction for Destiny's exotics? Thankfully, it wasn't. My perception of the scope and impact of the exotic tier changed drastically when I first read GameInformer's article on Destiny in early December. The article detailed some of the more big-picture abilities of three of Destiny's exotics, in particular, the description for the exotic sniper rifle Closing Time caught my eye:[quote][url=http://www.gameinformer.com/games/destiny/b/playstation4/archive/2014/04/04/a-player-39-s-journey.aspx?PostPageIndex=6][b]Closing Time[/b] The perfect weapon for the camper on your team, this exotic sniper rifle camouflages your entire body whenever you are in zoomed view. Plus, shoot an ammo pick-up from a concealed location and the ordnance goes straight into your bags.[/url][/quote]When I first read this segment, I was rather hesitant and concerned. Cloaked sniping in Halo Reach was a huge problem, it was very easy for a player to score many kills while remaining undetected on maps like Paradiso and Hemorrhage where the kill distances were just too large for a player to quickly spot cloaked snipers before it was too late. "What the hell was Bungie thinking?" I thought to myself. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the sweeping implications that the design of Closing Time introduced. For one, putting cloaking on an exotic weapon implied that there was no generalized and easily accessible cloaking ability in Destiny like there was in Halo Reach. Afterall, who would want to use Closing Time if one could simply use the cloaking ability with any old sniper to replicate the same effect? In addition, tying cloaking to specific weapons allows Bungie to balance the ability on a case by case basis. A lot of the clunkiness and problem areas of Halo Reach's active camouflage came from trying to design a cloak that functions fairly at all ranges. Rather than going down that path again, it makes all the sense in the world to design cloaking for a close range weapon like the shotgun in a different way from cloaking for a long range weapon like the sniper. There are different visual cues and mechanics that one can utilize for each scenario to create a situation that feels fair for both the predator and the prey. In the specific case of Closing Time, there are a number of mechanics we can implement in an attempt to balance out the power generated by the in-scope cloak ability. What if there was a delay before the cloak kicked in when you first entered scope? What if the potency of the cloak "pulsed" in effectiveness, allowing players to detect the sniper if they study an area for long enough? What if the strength of the cloak drops if you look around too quickly, promoting a methodical and calculating playstyle over the standard twitch-based sniper experience? These are only a few examples, but I hope you can see how each of them tries to introduce tradeoffs to what would otherwise be an overly dominant feature. In contrast to Closing Time's first ability, its second ability which allows the user to pick up ammo remotely by shooting it seems much more simple and benign, but in my mind it's just as powerful. The typical gameplay pattern of a long-range sniper has a core weakness: eventually you will run out of ammo and you'll have to close the distance between yourself and your prey or a supply point to restock before continuing your rampage. This creates a window of opportunity in which you can be ambushed up close, leading to your ultimate demise. As you can imagine, the remote ammo pick-up ability mitigates this window of weakness by allowing the sniper to collect ammo at a safe range. Mind you, the ability itself is not without its own drawbacks, for one, the sniper must reveal his position in order to collect ammo, which gives any opponents in the area a chance to track him or her down. In addition, depending on how large of a target ammo drops are in Destiny, the act of shooting ammo to pick it up might be difficult to do in high pressure situations. Finally, if it turns out to be too strong, we could always make it so that you only pick up a fraction of the total ammo by shooting it, which should put more pressure on long-range users to conserve ammo wisely lest they be forced to close the gap to restock. There are numerous directions we can take the design of Closing Time in, but the ultimate point of these examples is that it's okay if a weapon has a powerful ability as long as we can design it in such a way so that opponents feel like they can develop an active strategy for counteracting that power. We call this notion counterplay, the point of these abilities isn't to outright award victory to the player because they have a better gun, but to change the way that players interact with each other and their environment in interesting ways that lead to a more emergent experience. Now either of these abilities would be cool on their own, but what really made the design of Closing Time resonate with me was the way that these abilities worked together to create a clear thematic role. Closing Time isn't just a sniper rifle, it is [i]*the*[/i] sniper rifle to wield if you want to become the ultimate long-range camouflaged marksman. I think it would be really cool if all exotics aspired to provide a fantasy as cohesive as that, these legendary weapons should be so unique, so dangerous, so out of the box crazy that they scream to be built around by the person who finds them. So with this presumption that Closing Time is the current golden standard towards which all exotics should strive towards, what sort of powers and abilities should we expect to see on exotics? Which ones work well to create flavorful and mechanically interesting roles, and which ones are too problematic to work? [b]Destiny Speculation: Exotic Abilities continues on the next post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973153]Please click this Hyperlink to continue reading![/url][/b] [spoiler][b]Table of Contents 1) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973135/0/0]Introduction[/url] 2) >> Closing Time: a Case Study << 3) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973153]A Brief Intermission and Apology[/url] 4) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973163]25 Sub-Exotic Abilities from the Alpha[/url] 5) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973166]Exotic Abilities[/url] 6) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973172]Epilogue[/url][/b][/spoiler]

[quote][b]5) Exotic Abilities[/b][/quote]So before we launch into this task of concepting different exotic abilities and evaluating how they'll work out in Destiny, I feel that it's very important to point out that Game Design is not a science. This is good, because it means that we are not constrained to a singular mathematically optimized way of designing games to be fun, but it also means that it's very hard to guarantee the success or failure of any particular mechanic we choose to implement without first prototyping it extensively. As a result I plan to keep my ideas in this section as broad and flexible as possible, as nailing down specific details will only limit the creative process. I'm not here today to say with absolute certainty that any particular ability must or must not be in Destiny for it to be a success, this thread is just a thought experiment to help us set up expectations for the potential of Destiny's exotic sandbox. I hope that the reader will be able to follow my train of thought and understand the mindset I'm using to generate and evaluate these ideas. ____________________________________________________________ Inspired by the example of Closing Time, the original concept for this thread had me designing several different abilities which would work well on an exotic sniper. I soon realized that focusing exclusively on snipers limited my ideas too much, and so I expanded the thread to encompass the entire sandbox, but I kept many of the original ideas I came up with because they brought out different thematic aspects of the sniper fantasy. The first ability that I came up with tried to support the fantasy of a scouting sniper, a Guardian who uses the scope on his sniper rifle to spot enemy forces and call out their positions to the rest of his fire team:[quote]1) Enemies become marked with a temporary team-wide waypoint when spotted through this weapon's sights.[/quote]Knowledge is power, and the information that this ability could provide to a fireteam makes it exotic worthy in my opinion. Though as anyone who has played Halo 3 VIP knows, it really sucks to fight with a perpetual waypoint over your head as your opponents can anticipate your every movement. Striking the right balance between the time it takes for the waypoint to decay when the line of sight is broken and how often a player can be marked with a waypoint is essential for the success of the ability. Now this scouting ability wouldn't work terribly well on a close range weapon like the shotgun because you won't usually find yourself scanning through your sights for an opponent. With a little adaptation though, you could reconfigure the ability to look something like this:[quote]2) Causing damage with this weapon marks the enemy with a temporary personal waypoint.[/quote]Look at how changing a few aspects of the original ability can drastically change the flavor and function of the end result. Rather than being the weapon of choice for a scout, a shotgun with this ability would be favored moreso by a predator who is tracking down his wounded prey. Whenever you change a component of an ability, think about how that impacts the way that people will view and use it. Back to snipers. While I love the design of Closing Time, it doesn't really appeal to me as a sniper because it's simply not dynamic enough for my tastes. I designed the next two abilities to cater to a far more mobile playstyle, a hit and run skirmisher sniper who flanks for a kill before vanishing to a different vantage point to acquire his next target:[quote]3) Kills with this weapon grant temporary cloaking and movement speed.[/quote][quote]4) The last round in a magazine creates a smoke screen on contact.[/quote]As you can see, both these abilities encourage a rapid departure by the player after they've expended their magazine killing enemies. If that's not enough motivation, perhaps increasing the time it takes to reload said sniper would do the trick. The point of these abilities is to create a theme, if players are ignoring that theme to use it as a strictly better sniper, then I feel the exotic isn't working as well as it should be. I'm rather fond of these abilities, and there are many knobs that can be twisted to balance it into the right power level while keeping the thematics intact. Hopefully from these four examples the reader can see how the theme can inform the mechanics or how the mechanics can inform the theme. We refer to these design approaches as top down and bottom up design respectively, and they are frequently used in all aspects of design. ____________________________________________________________ With regards to mechanics that are fun for the sake of being fun, another viable direction of exploration might focus on abilities which heavily manipulate the physics of the game. As Halo's Gravity Hammer has shown us, even a minor (and honestly somewhat gimicky) physics-related ability can lead to surprisingly fun shenanigans and gametypes. I unfortunately haven't had many particularly amazing ideas for abilities that emulate the same sort of chaos that the gravity hammer could cause, but here's a stab in the dark to get the creative juices flowing:[quote]5) Projectiles fired by this weapon are shrouded in a cone of force which lightly repels projectiles, players, and vehicles.[/quote]Are several Guardians spamming grenades at your position? Simply fire a rocket from a weapon possessing this ability and sweep them all back towards their source! Is that Pike idling too close to a cliff? Give him a quick push to his death! I strongly feel that there are a diversity of players who will play this game for many reasons, and I don't believe that every exotic needs to be catered to be useful in the most hardcore of Crucible or Raid experiences. If the ability is fun without being terribly annoying or obnoxious, I feel that it would ultimately be a harmless addition to the game. It can sometimes be a fine line to balance, but that's why extensive prototyping and testing is required to ensure that these abilities are a good choice for the game's health. ____________________________________________________________ It's hard to talk about weapon abilities without eventually mentioning elemental effects. So far there are three elemental types in Destiny: Solar, Arc, and Void, and they've appeared on many sub-exotic weapons in the Alpha and are baked into the core identities of every Guardian subclass. But with regards to exotics, I feel that the trope of an elemental weapon needs to be kicked up a notch to be truly considered exotic. Shooting fire, electricity, or emptiness for the sake of shooting fire, electricity, or emptiness is well and good, but as I've said previously about Thunderlord, in my mind exotic weapons should aspire to a higher fantasy and cohesion than simply just being more damaging versions of their sub-exotic counterparts. That's not to say that exotic elemental weapons shouldn't be pursued, it's just that if you're going to do the fantasy justice, then you should add serious thematic utility to complement the elemental damage. For example, consider the following abilities for Arc, Solar, and Void weapons respectively:[quote]6) Precision kills with this weapon deals bonus arc damage to nearby enemies.[/quote][quote]7) The last round in a magazine creates a blinding flash when fired.[/quote][quote]8) Causing damage with this weapon dampens the target's auditory senses.[/quote]Trying to come up with effects which complement the theme of a given element goes a long ways towards achieving a more satisfying experience overall. It takes a lot of extra effort, but it helps your game to avoid the all too common trap of becoming a glorified rock paper scissors match of elemental damage and resistances. ____________________________________________________________ As much as I'd love to go hyper in depth with numerous more ideas I have, it's time to start bringing this thread to a close. [b]Destiny Speculation: Exotic Abilities continues on the next post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973172]Please click this Hyperlink to continue reading![/url][/b] [spoiler][b]Table of Contents 1) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973135/0/0]Introduction[/url] 2) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973146]Closing Time: a Case Study[/url] 3) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973153] A Brief Intermission and Apology[/url] 4) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973163]25 Sub-Exotic Abilities from the Alpha[/url] 5) >> Exotic Abilities << 6) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973172]Epilogue[/url][/b][/spoiler]

[quote][b]4) 25 Sub-Exotic Equipment Abilities from the Alpha[/b][/quote]Unfortunately my notetaking was not meticulous enough to include the original combination of abilities I found on each specific item nor the equipment tiers that each ability was found on, but I hope that the reader can quickly get a general idea of Destiny's most basic triggered and passive abilities by reading through the following section, which I will lightly annotate. We'll begin with a few of the more basic weapon abilities: [quote]1) Kills with this weapon grant bonus damage for a short time.[/quote][quote]2) Kills with this weapon increase reload speed for a short time.[/quote][quote]3) Kills with this weapon reduces the cooldown of your grenade.[/quote][Trigger] causes [Effect]. Simple, right? The triggers themselves really could be any verb or action that takes place while using a weapon, for example: [quote]4) Precision kills with this weapon dramatically increase reload speed.[/quote]Presumably a precision shot is an accuracy reliant shot that damages a weakpoint for increased damage. For most enemies, this would probably come in the form of a headshot. An ability like this is perhaps harder to trigger than an ability which requires generic kills, but the payoff would hypothetically be stronger because of the added layer of difficulty to activate. [quote]5) Body shots with this weapon increase precision damage for a short time.[/quote]Likewise, I'd assume that body shots are any type of shot that doesn't cause increased damage from hitting a weak point. That sorta makes this particular ability interesting, it encourages players to hit enough body shots before capitalizing on the bonus precision damage to go for some headshots to finish off the kill. [quote]6) Melee kills increase the reload speed of this weapon for a short time.[/quote]The perfect ability to have when you find yourself out of ammo and you have to club someone to death, am I right? That way you'll be able to quickly reload and swap out of "desperately melee for life" mode. [quote]7) Causing damage with this weapon increases its stability.[/quote]Stability was a statistic which affected the degree to which your weapon recoiled when you shot it if memory serves. The more accurate you are, the more accurate you are. Funny how tautology works that way. [quote]8) Reloading this weapon grants a damage bonus for a short time.[/quote]Not all triggers need to revolve around death and damage, this ability is interesting because it rewards the player for reloading just prior to combat. If you reload too early, the effect might wear off and you won't get the full benefit, if you reload too late, your opponent will get a few shots off on you before you can return fire. [quote]9) Kills with this weapon grant bonus ammo, directly to the magazine.[/quote]This ability was found on a particularly frightening legendary shotgun. As the ability says, the ammo you gain goes directly to your magazine, so it allows you fight for longer without having to reload. [quote]10) Kills with this weapon grant bonus reserve ammo.[/quote]In contrast, this ability gives you more total ammo, so it's more useful for long term engagements than it is for short term engagements. [quote]11) Expect to find more ammo for this weapon.[/quote]Along with the previous two abilities, this is a good example of an ability which can range in power depending upon what type of weapon it is placed on. The ability might not be noticed or appreciated on a primary weapon as players are usually given an abundant supply of primary ammo, but on a special weapon and especially on a heavy weapon this ability really spikes in appeal and power. [quote]12) The last round in a magazine deals bonus damage.[/quote][quote]13) The bottom half of each magazine causes additional damage.[/quote]I rather like the style of these two abilities and their no doubt numerous cousins. Placing special abilities on specific bullets or specific parts of the magazine creates climax moments during combat which creates interesting decisions for players. Do you purposely waste ammo to get closer to the special bullets? Or do you ignore it and treat it as a nice occasional bonus? It also allows powerful abilities to exist that would otherwise be obnoxious if they triggered with every bullet fired. [quote]14) One random bullet in the magazine causes considerable bonus damage.[/quote]This last variant is interesting, because usually randomness is an undesirable aspect in a competitive game, but at the very least the ability is consistently random. No matter how many times you reload, you are guaranteed that only one bullet in your magazine will deal bonus damage, and because of that fact you can predict and adjust your expectations as you burn through your magazine. Whether or not the ability is successful will depend on how reliable players feel that weapon is, though it would help tremendously if there was a visual cue to warn you when you've reached the location of your special shot. ____________________________________________________________ The next couple of abilities were all found on various types of armor. Their triggers tended to be more broad than the triggers found on weapons, and usually revolved around general actions completed as a player. [quote]15) Increased reload speed with scout rifles.[/quote][quote]16) Carry more ammo for shotgun.[/quote]These two were the most common abilities I found on Armor during the Alpha, and came in a variety of flavors for the different weapon archetypes. Finding the variant that matches your favorite loadout type might be a pain, but it's presumably worth it, I unfortunately didn't do much testing to see just how impactful each ability was. [quote]17) Grenade hits restore melee energy.[/quote][quote]18) Increased grenade throw distance.[/quote][quote]19) Increased melee attack speed.[/quote]While it would make sense for these sorts of abilities appear on arm armor, I actually found some of them on helmets. It shows that Bungie isn't going to let thematic cohesion get in the way of creating enticing pieces of armor. [quote]20) Replenish health when you pick up an orb.[/quote]Picking up an orb refers to collecting the orbs of light that are generated when an ally uses his super to vanquish enemies. Usually these orbs significantly reduce the cooldown on your super, but by wearing armor with this flavor of trigger, there are other bonus effects which encourage you to stick close to your fire team. I am curious to see if replenishing health includes shields, and if the effect is instantaneous or more gradual. [quote]21) More super energy from non-guardian kills.[/quote]Abilities which shave time off of your Super's cooldown are powerful for obvious reasons, and this one is interesting in particular because it's the only ability I've seen which tries to create a separation between the Crucible (where Guardian kills are frequent) and the rest of the game (where there are no Guardian kills). I have mixed feelings on that, but I'm curious to see if there will be other abilities which are triggered on specific enemy types. ____________________________________________________________ The final few abilities were all rather interesting ones I found on weapons, some of them thanks to my Decoherent Engram shopping spree. [quote]22) This weapon grows more accurate the longer it is fired.[/quote]Presumably accuracy in this case refers to the spread of the bullets. I'm curious to see if this ability causes any weird metagame tactics where you preemptively fire the weapon to increase its accuracy by the time you pop out from cover. [quote]23) Slide further while this weapon is equipped.[/quote]Mobility is always a fun aspect of any action game, and I imagine that abilities which impact your mobility will be rather popular amongst players. [quote]24) This weapon can be fired in full auto mode.[/quote]Remember the aforementioned frightening legendary shotgun which gave you ammo directly to the magazine for bonus kills? This was its second ability. Very terrifying. [quote]25) Radar stays active while aiming down this weapon's sights.[/quote]While Destiny’s radar isn’t as powerful as Halo’s radar, an ability like this would be hyper useful on any weapon for which you want to spend the majority of your time aiming down sights. ____________________________________________________________ Hopefully the reader can see how these basic building blocks add additional decisions and considerations to the standard gameplay in rather natural and interesting ways. Remember though, this is merely the tip of the iceberg, from here on out the abilities that we expect to see on exotics are only going to get stronger and crazier. What might Destiny’s end game have in store for us? [b]Destiny Speculation: Exotic Abilities continues on the next post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973166]Please click this Hyperlink to continue reading![/url][/b] [spoiler][b]Table of Contents 1) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973135/0/0]Introduction[/url] 2) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973146]Closing Time: a Case Study[/url] 3) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973153] A Brief Intermission and Apology[/url] 4) >> 25 Sub-Exotic Abilities from the Alpha << 5) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973166]Exotic Abilities[/url] 6) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973172]Epilogue[/url][/b][/spoiler]

[quote][b]6) Epilogue[/b][/quote]As I hope this thread has shown the reader, Exotics are a great excuse for Bungie's designers, artists, writers, and engineers to go all out with their respective crafts to create the most beautiful and interesting equipment to decorate the landscape of Destiny's endgame. This thread has only focused on mechanical abilities, but there is so much more that goes into the creation of an exotic that can't be covered today. I'm very excited to see the result of their hard work, be it special animations, intricate back stories and lore, or unique mechanics that I didn't even consider. I'm sure that there are no doubt some people who are concerned that Destiny's exotics have the potential to unbalance both the PvP and PvE aspects of Destiny's gameplay. While these concerns are not unfounded, I really don't feel that things will be as bad as some people predict. For one, the overall power level of the exotic tier will be limited by the fact that players can only equip up to one exotic weapon and up to one exotic armor piece at a time. This should prevent the game from becoming too complex or pants-on-head silly, while empowering player decisions and making entry into the end game more accessible for average gamers. Not to mention, Bungie has said that they are committed to dynamically balancing the game post launch using a variety of systems they unfortunately haven't detailed yet, but in my mind there are enough simple solutions to enact should a particular exotic start to dominate in the metagame that it really shouldn't be that huge of a concern. In general, as long as exotic abilities are designed with both conveyance and counterplay in mind, the metagame should remain fairly healthy on its own, shifting backwards and forwards in a rather natural and interesting fashion. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the topics I wanted to cover in depth with this thread, and for that I must apologize once again. I'm rather well known for my long threads, but even I have my limits with regards to scope and size, so you must forgive me if I choose to wait till another day to continue the conversation. As a parting gift though, allow me to share with you an unsorted list of ideas that I was unable to work into the main body of the thread. Hopefully they will spark the reader's imagination and lead to some critical thinking. ____________________________________________________________ What if there were abilities which multiplied the amount of super energy you could earn for a duration after performing certain feats? Something like "Earning a double kill with this weapon multiplies the amount of super energy you gain for a duration"? Would something like that be too infrequent to be useful? Would it be too frequent to be balanced? What if there were abilities that generated orbs of light on certain triggers? A team oriented ability like that would encourage fireteams to work together, but what sort of trigger would complement an effect of this power? If it occurs too frequently, you'll have snowballing supers for days. What if there were abilities that allowed you to fake out your opponent? Something like a Rocket Launcher which first fired a harmless Hologram Rocket before firing the real rocket after a delay so you could anticipate your opponent's movements and nail him good? Would that effect be too binary with its success rates? Would there be ways to convey that ability properly so victims wouldn't be overly frustrated by the deception? What about applying movement or stat debuffs with your weapons? Can you make things like slows or roots or a loss of stability appreciable to the user without making them crippling for the victim? Is it possible to bake enough counterplay into those forms of abilities to make them feel fair for the targets? Or would this design space be better handled by subclass abilities which have a greater potential for counterplay than weapon abilities? We have plenty of abilities that do all sorts of things like "You can throw grenades farther" or "You can reload faster", but what if we had abilities which applied those effects to nearby members on your team aside from you? Would that be valuable to players? Can you convey when the aura is working properly? Could it compound and become too powerful depending on the effect? What if there were super strong abilities that came with significant and unique drawbacks? Imagine something like a cursed scope which allows you to see player outlines through thin walls, but the drawback is that it drains your super meter to power and keep the ability active. Would players actually go for a double edged sword like that? How powerful does the ability / drawback have to be to allow it to be balanceable while maintaining its appeal? I didn't even really cover many abilities for exotic armor pieces. What if there was an effect that triggered whenever the player slid? What if there was an effect that triggered whenever the player took damage or whenever the player took damage from a specific elemental source? What if there were abilities that modified the way your vertical movement mode worked? There are so many unexplored triggers for this particular design space, I'm really curious to see how exotic armor abilities are able to transcend over the otherwise less exciting sub-exotic armor abilities. What if there was an ability to increase the rate of item drops or experience gain? Would equipment with those abilities be overly dominant in PvE, ala the jester's gloves / covetous serpent rings in Dark Souls 2? Could tradeoffs be implemented to make it more fair, like increased exp at the cost of drop rate? What if some of the exotic weapons didn't even fit into an established weapon archetype? The enemies of the Last City have numerous weapons at their disposal which don't fit into any of the archetypes of weapons that we Guardians use, what if you could acquire those weapons from a rare drop? Some of them might be considered sub-exotic, but perhaps some of them would be weird enough or powerful enough on their own to be considered exotic without even having a ton of super crazy abilities tagged on. Would that add meaningful variety to the sandbox? Would that add mechanical depth to the metagame? What if certain abilities were only active at certain times of day? Imagine something like a weapon which gains extra damage during nighttime. Would players enjoy the theme that such an ability would bring even if it was somewhat inconsistent and unreliable? Or, what if certain abilities gave you bonuses against specific enemy races? Much of the lore talks about how this weapon was used for killing Fallen or this weapon was used to kill Cabal, what better way to show that than having an ability specifically tailored for destroying enemies of that type? The flavor reminds me of the favored enemy mechanic for Rangers in Dungeons and Dragons. What if some weapons override your usual melee or grenade abilities while equipped? It seems almost thematically wrong if a weapon like Red Death didn't have an ability to go along with its blood soaked bayonet (though I am fully expecting some sweet melee animations for that thing at the very least). Would that be appealing to players? Would that increase the complexity of the game too much? What if we had abilities which assisted vehicle operation? Something like "Kills with a vehicle shaves time off its boost" or "Splatters with this vehicle repair it slightly." Would those abilities be too powerful? Would players value equipment which pushes them into more of a pilot role than an infantry role? Could we even stick some of these abilities directly onto some of the higher level Sparrows? "Splatters with this sparrow increase your super's energy", and stuff like that? ____________________________________________________________ There's just so much out there to think about and explore and I could probably generate ideas for days. It's one of the reasons that this topic has kept me captivated for the past six months, but every time I tried to write about it things quickly got too long and spiraled into madness. For the present though, I'm interested to hear what the community has to say about the ideas proposed in this thread. Again, while much of this is speculation, I hope you can see where I'm coming from and take that into account when you reply. I'm hoping to see civil and critical discussion on the topic, and if there's anything I can clarify or expound upon, please let me know. I do not know what will happen on Bungie Day with regards to IGN's coverage of Destiny's high level equipment, but I'm excited to see how many of the ideas I've been puzzling over for the past couple of months make or do not make it into the final game. This really is an exciting time to be a member on Bungie.net, even though we've seen so much of what Destiny has to offer, I feel that we still haven't seen anything yet :) Hopefully the next thread doesn't take me several months to complete, not sure what I'll write about... but until then keep the conversation going! ~Hylebos [b]If you would like to comment, please reply to the Original Post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/65973135/0/0]Please click on this Hyperlink to return to the top![/url][/b]